Nightscream worked dilligently on modifying the scan data for her new alternate mode. It wasn'T such an easy task as she previously had hoped. HEr thoughts took her in strange ways, at one point having her thing about sacrificing her alternate mode in favor of turning herself into a combiner. All with one simple reason: They were still hard pressed to find energon. She had no doubt she could modify her chassis with the solar cells, but without them being integrated into the design, they would only suffice for powering a small frame, unarmed one at that.
She pulled up profiles of other personnel and even the surveillance data on autobots, going through them profile by profile to see if it could give her any inspiration. The decepticons were all so very unhelpful. All boasting heavy weaponry and powerfull engines. she was guilty of it herself, being equipped with no less than three weapon systems and her current alternate mode basically being guns strapped to over sized afterburners.
She didn't think the Autobot files would be very helpful. they had the weird habit of not scanning a flight mode with a very few exceptions. That idea made her spark ache a little bit as she remembered her trine mates. Who knew where they were? One on a crazy adventure, going on her own through the universe uncaring of the war at home, the other on Earth, fighting on the other side no less. Both so far away she couldn't even feel their bond anymore.
She sent a quick memo over the wireless to Turbulence and Prism not to prioritize disguising themselves as Cybertronians had to be public knowledge on Earth by this point. Surprised for a moment when she reached their file on Prism, she hastily added the post scriptum: And for the love of Primus, at least pick an amphibious vehicle if not a flyer!
Shuffling further along the profiles with a bored expression, she went over Prime's profile as well. The gentle titan - what good did it do him? She kept scrolling, but then, as she reached U, she suddenly had it. An autobot sort of solved this problem long before her, a very publicly known one as well. How could she be so blind? It was so simple, especially given what her form used to be before she rescanned to her current form to fit better into the labs.
Ultra Magnus, he was a smaller bot who merged with the trailer of his vehicle mode to become larger than prime or megatron themselves. She pulled up the picture of the Earth's shuttle again, and a photo of herself and her trine. It brought a rare smile to her face.
In the front with a prissy white paintjob and that cheeky glint in his eye,
Jetfire. Why did he had to choose the other side? True, her brother was reckless and a troll, but always looking out for his sisters if they needed it.
He was framed by two femmes, on the right was the other femme, her purple a shade lighter than currently Nightscream's own and always,
always with that smug smirk, and equally as often fighting with their brother was
Spacewarp.
Slightly behind them was she, the same shape and size, nigh indistinguishable save for her visor and matte grey paint job. The space trine. Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker might have been the poster boys of the decepticons, fast and agile, but when it came to fighting, the shuttleformers packed a meaner punch and had so much more grunt in their engines than those paper airplanes of a trine could ever dream of.
Comparing her old form to the image of the Human shuttle, she knew she had it. She just had to go back to what she was in her spark, only on a different scale. Displaying the scan data she begun to work on making the modifications, hoping to be done quickly and surprise the autobots y catching up to them.